Update on my life

I just lost miserably in 3 rounds of Scopa. It was horribly depressing, but I'm getting the hang of the game. It's a traditional Italian card game that can get pretty intense when people really get into it. Get ready...I'm bringing it to America!

We had the day off on Wednesday, so we took half of the day to utilize our "backstage" passes to get into some of the houses on site that are off limits to the public. We made it through three houses in about three hours...yes, they were worth that much attention. The first house was incredible and my favorite. It has an underground crypt system with beautifully preserved wall paintings. One of the back rooms actually has one of the most important paintings for transition to Third Style Roman wall paintings in the country. It was beautiful, and naturally, I took about 50 pictures in just that room. I almost feel like I'm in an Art History theme park walking through the buildings here. There is something new and exciting every time you turn the corner.

Our team spent some time in the Pompei library the other day doing research for VCP publication. The "library" has an inordinate amount of literature on Pompeian history, including primary documents from the earliest recorded excavations. I found images of excavations on our site from before World War 2. Our southern most region was one of the sites most heavily damaged during the bombings in WWII, so a lot of our site suffered a lot of damage and is not in the best condition anymore. Finding images of what it look like before it was bombed, when the walls were all still standing, was really helpful and just plain cool.

The past few days we have been analyzing walls in our insula to try to sort the phases of construction. It's been somewhat tiring but really interesting. After spending forever setting phases for a few of the plots, we spent a lot of time today working on the walls of a water tower and came up with a plausible argument for a water source. It was like solving a historical puzzle! We spent a few hours working in the Forum with John Dobbins yesterday. He is a specialist on Pompeian archaeology in the Forum, so he had us analyze a few of the construction and art historical issues he has been working on to compare arguments. I didn't agree with some of his analyses of one of the altars, which was kind of cool. Disagreeing with one of the top Pompeian specialists probably isn't a great idea, but I felt like I was finally understanding the material better. My group successfully identified a lot of the construction changes in the area leading to the forum too, so overall, it was an extremely beneficial morning. Now I just have to finish reading his book...

I had a bunch of ants in my tent last night, which was not so fun.

The air has been especially clear the past few days, so Vesuvius and Capri are completely visible. I wish everyone was here to see it! I miss you all and love you!